Abstract

Technological unemployment is what happens when automation eliminates jobs and not enough new jobs arrive to employ everyone, leaving part of the workforce permanently unemployed. Who owns the money that used to pay them? Business owners will argue that it’s theirs. I will argue that it’s not. I consider and refute several arguments for their claim, and then argue that this money is collective property. Because it’s collective property, we can use it to fund basic incomes for the technologically unemployed without violating anyone’s property rights. Moreover, it is equal in amount to the total incomes lost to technological unemployment, and therefore big enough to fund a decent standard of living for the unemployed, no matter how numerous they are. This is a new kind of collective property, distinct and different from other collective properties, such as the natural world, employment rents, and social capital.